The Earth's moving puzzle
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Understanding the forces that shape our planet
The Earth may appear solid and stable beneath our feet, but in reality it is constantly moving and changing. Mountains rise, oceans widen, volcanoes erupt, and earthquakes shake the ground because the outer layer of our planet is broken into moving sections called tectonic plates. These movements occur extremely slowly — usually only a few centimetres each year — yet over millions of years they completely reshape the surface of the Earth.
The theory of plate tectonics is now one of the most important ideas in geography and…
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